Plus Ça Change. . .

It’s been widely reported that Stéphane Delorme, who has been writing for Cahiers du Cinéma since 1998, has been named to replace Jean-Michel Frodon as the editor-in-chief of that magazine, which Phaidon Press purchased from Le Monde earlier this year. The French blogger David Genzel publishes an e-mail he received from Frodon: “I think the world of him; it’s the solution I’ve been advocating for months.” It’s a good sign that, whatever changes are afoot at Cahiers, they’ll be in the spirit of the magazine’s glorious history and recent achievements. Cahiers is still the best place to catch up on most of the best of new movies, in part because Paris is still the best place to see a wide cross-section of world cinema, new and classic, and in part because the magazine’s focus is not sociological or political or industry-oriented, but devoted to the art of the cinema, the cinema as an art. And many of the problems that Cahiers has faced in recent years reflect problems in the state of the art. Let’s hope that Phaidon can find a way to make the magazine and its tributaries (DVD distribution, book publishing, Web site, etc.) solvent without sacrificing their inner identities.

Here’s a perfect example of what makes Cahiers so important: they just published a book, “Autoportrait de Chantal Akerman en Cinéaste” (“Self-Portrait of Chantal Akerman as a Filmmaker”), in which she offers and discusses excerpts of scripts and other work documents, frame enlargements, and family photos. Akerman remains a major director. Her most recent film, “Là-Bas,” is remarkable and hasn’t been released here; her modernist classic “Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles,” from 1975, will be released on DVD by Criterion in August; and a book such as the one Cahiers is issuing may, in putting her career in perspective, help to bring much deserved attention to her ongoing work.

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